


gone (play on)

by carmen



Series: Emergencyverse [2]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Breakfast, Comfort, Fix-It, Gen, Podfic Available, Recovery, References to Past Sexual Assault, Thor: The Dark World, Thor: The Dark World Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-16
Packaged: 2018-01-01 18:49:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carmen/pseuds/carmen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They find time in the aftermath for a good meal and quiet company.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gone (play on)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow-up to [Meditation In An Emergency](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1039992), because I felt awful to OP for leaving Loki in such a rough place; I'd hesitate to call it fluff because he's still grappling with some really dark thoughts, and this doesn't magically make everything better for him, but it at least gives him a quiet moment with his mom (who'd do anything to protect him, even if this means doing things that are perfectly ordinary and banal to help him get back on track) and also, food. Ordinary comfort, I guess, as opposed to murderous vengeance.
> 
> The most obvious fix-it element, of course, is Frigga surviving. I tried to unfold that a little. You could probably read it separately from Meditation, if you like, the nature of Loki's traumatic experiences are not super ambiguous.

He's never liked the sauna before; he could count on one hand the number of times he'd dropped in on his brother and his cavalcade of warrior companions recreationally scalding themselves, long before the nature of his physiology became evident. His own bouts were considerably toned down from what the idiot's friends would delight in -- he was not actually being cooked alive, but he got some odd, patient gratification from pouring on the water and watching the steam rise. He feels scoured clean afterward. 

He hasn't slept, had scarcely eaten. All his books were stale and unhelpful; the spells within their pages were mere ink on paper and would tell him nothing. If he cannot wander far, this is the only deserted place available to him so early in the morning, or at least he had thought it deserted.

Frigga found him in there staring at his hands. They were bruise-blue, corpse-blue, and as he stood swiftly the illusion flickered away like a passing shiver. (Some dim feeble aspect of his consciousness was _profoundly_ grateful he'd thought to wear a robe to and from, though when startled the next trick to come to hand at least _depicted_ him as fully-clad. Fully clad in armor. If it hadn't been her, who would have discovered his shame instead, he couldn't say.) 

Something witty. Something bold-faced and sneering, something to field her startled looks ( _why must she look at him this way?_ why at all?) and with which to repulse her. He must say something. Pretense breaks. 

"Is there no spell," he begins, but his mouth is dry and his voice sounds strange to himself, "no curse to bring on forgetfulness?" 

"Oh, my child," she says, "nothing but time."

* * *

She found him in the throes of deep introspection and dragged him off (by the ear, he would have once said) to have breakfast. How very touching -- queen mother reconnecting with her son the war criminal and foundling. She'd dressed him and even raked a comb through his hair, something he was loath to do on his own. It seemed beyond pointless to confine him _now_ , but when the nature of the indignity was secret -- and by his good fortune it remained so, or he could never show his face again in any realm -- the speculation would still carry. They sequester themselves in Frigga's own bower; he is not bound when they take him there, not even for decorum's sake, and out of grudging regard for his mother he complies without struggle. (But this is a lie, he is grateful for this in a way words cannot encompass.)

Half in soft shadow beneath the arches, the thin light of early morning spreading its fingers across the stone, all things are quite agreeable except for Loki himself; he is a blotch of black and green against sandstone and rosy wood. He sits opposite his mother with only the table between them. 

It's just like old times. Brunch with mother, how are his studies, how is Thor, that blessed lunkhead, et cetera, et cetera. 

(But this is a lie. They will never be the way they were before.) 

"Is something the matter, mother? You haven't touched your--" His eyes narrow and he grapples to recall the name of something pink and seed-studded on her plate he can't identify. "--meal." 

He will confess this, indifference is a difficult pose and he is _beastly_ hungry; this is his first real meal in some time, something presented to him in attractive fashion and not simply left for him in the lukewarm hope he'd eat it at some point and not die. (Harvest fruits. He prods at one with a fork and remembers a little sheepishly how he'd broken the furniture apart in his premature grief, smashed all his dishes and trod shards and fruit alike under his heel. He had bled black, then. Did she know it?) Harvest fruits, amusing buns and heaped up eggs, cheese and fish and honeyed porridge, wine and water -- it might not mean much to one with such cloddish appetites as Thor's, who could easily polish off the spread in front of them twice over, but it constitutes an impossible array of riches for one who found prison food perhaps a little wan and who has grown tired of fasting. (Sweating does have its way of urging hunger on.) But Frigga has yet to serve herself and so he cannot begin without an answer. 

"I'm afraid my appetite has abandoned me," she said, with a warmth that made the perfectly banal words seem perfectly genuine from a matron who could feast with the best of them. "But don't let me hold you back -- come on now, tuck in." 

This is all the permission he needs, but it's not enough to comfort him, exactly. 

"Why have you brought me here, then? To watch me eat?" 

This arouses more prickliness in him, as wasn't hard to do these days, but he won't question it -- indeed he is prodigiously whetted in hunger and perfectly capable of being suspicious while lifting forkfuls of drippy egg to his mouth. Before he had always been a little wary of poisoning, or of being drugged somehow, but now he rather thinks he'd like the idea. Death at breakfast in a secluded little garden with birdsong on the air. 

"For the company, dear. No one's spoken with you in days." 

"And what company." 

He swirls the wine in his cup, but he is watching her. Time passes without a single word being spoken and it seems to take positively _aeons_. 

Frigga adjusts her mantle over her shoulders, uncomfortably. At first he takes the stiffness of the gesture to be more discomfort -- Loki knows full well he could hardly be good company like this, she may have appreciated his shining wit when he was her son and a precocious little creature tugging on her skirts, but now he is -- a traitor, a criminal, and a poor conversationalist. He's near-mute.

A criminal, yes. Odin has not belabored the point since the battle. Perhaps -- ha -- he believes he has suffered enough. This is doubtful; if he thought salt tears and a sore arse would balance out the books for what the Chitauri helped wreak in New York alone he'd have signed up for it sooner. These idle thoughts leave him irritable, piecing together and re-piecing the strangeness of his resentments and the proper name for the thing done. He does not feel more maidenly, more fragile, as Odin certainly sees him now if he weeps for him like a sullied maid. He feels as if some part of him has been butchered. He feels as if he is dead. Death might settle his ledger yet. He'd never die for Odin, but for her, maybe...

Frigga's arms are folded in front of her in such a way that it becomes clear -- she sits too-upright, too properly for even a queen on her throne, a self-conscious hand tugging at the sashes of her gown. Drinks only small sips, breathes only cautiously. Loki realizes with a pang of conscience (though he would not have recognized it as such) that his mother was still in the process of healing from her own wounds. He was not the only one who had suffered -- she had not lingered long but it had been nerve-blasting enough, the false reports and lurching rise and fall of hopes, the queen so near to her end before the strength in her had rallied. He hadn't thought she might live. Worse still, she had seen all of _that_ with those wounds still on her body. 

Underneath her gown there are bandages. Perhaps she will bear scars. Such things do not last long with their kind, but memory runs long in long-lived creatures, and those will remain. (He rubs at his mouth with his rather absurd gilt-edged napkin, running his tongue along the interior memory of stitches) 

He's conscious that the parallel does not exist, that it is bluntly offensive to _her_ in all her honor, who fell in battle and not tangled up in the coils of a botched bluff. But still he wants to ask. Does she dream of it, does she lie awake afraid of a dead man? She had the satisfaction of watching him die, _him_ the coward outlaw _thing_ he will not name. Loki does not envy her the sight. Does she touch her hand to her heart's seat in her chest and remember how it felt to have a blade through it? He doesn't know where the site of his injury is to be found, if it is in his body or somewhere else entirely.

His own posture is not so uninhibited now either. He sits with a self-consciously nonchalant bearing, knees apart (the leg was nothing, the lingering pains of savage acts left untreated are mere inconvenient trifles and obstacles to an already inconvenient body, he has broken his _spine_ before, do men think him a weakling?)

Frigga is a wise woman. Surely she can heal herself; he trusts her that far, and his trust is more like a prayer than he yet knows. But can she heal him? 

"Ah. Very well; where ought I begin?" 

He wants to send her out and to have nothing to do with her again. He wants to lie to her, fluidly and well,; he wants to destroy himself. He wants never to see her face again. He wants to sink down and lay his head on her lap like a child. He wants to sleep until his name is forgotten in this or any realm. 

Loki does none of these things. He smiles and asks if she has been feeling well, if the wards at the city's limits have been successfully rebuilt, if she has broken new ground in the un-knotting of a particularly difficult piece of spellcraft. He asks her how Foster is doing, the surest indicator that he's hard-up for topics of conversation. In short, they talk of anything and everything but pain. 

Perhaps this is all vain prattle and empty talk. He will be alone again, he will fail them both again, they will be at odds again and the old madness will sweep back over him and eat up all his substance. It'll happen in time. Hope is a cruel thing. Frigga's son punishes himself by hoping.


End file.
